He sets about
learning Chinese, and after the lapse of many years, during which
his mind subsides into a certain state of tranquillity, he acquires
sufficient knowledge of Chinese to be able to translate with ease
the inscriptions to be found on its singular crockery. Yes, the
laziest of human beings, through the Providence of God, a being too
of rather inferior capacity, acquires the written part of a
language so difficult that, as Lavengro said on a former occasion,
none but the cleverest people in Europe, the French, are able to
acquire it. But God did not intend that man should merely acquire
Chinese. He intended that he should be of use to his species, and
by the instrumentality of the first Chinese inscription which he
translates, the one which first arrested his curiosity, he is
taught the duty of hospitality; yes, by means of an inscription in
the language of a people, who have scarcely an idea of hospitality
themselves, God causes the slothful man to play a useful and
beneficent part in the world, relieving distressed wanderers, and,
amongst others, Lavengro himself. But a striking indication of the
man's surprising sloth is still apparent in what he omits to do; he
has learnt Chinese, the most difficult of languages, and he
practises acts of hospitality, because he believes himself enjoined
to do so by the Chinese inscription, but he cannot tell the hour of
the day by the clock within his house; he can get on, he thinks,
very well without being able to do so; therefore from this one
omission, it is easy to come to a conclusion as to what a
sluggard's part the man would have played in life, but for the
dispensation of Providence; nothing but extreme agony could have
induced such a man to do anything useful.
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